Photo Archives - Africa Collection

The Field Museum contains one of the finest collections of Cameroon artifacts from the West African grassfields. In the 1920's, Jan Kleykamp, representing the J .F. G. Umlauff Company in Hamburg, sold a collection of artifacts to the Field Museum. The purchase included 332 ethnological photographs taken in 1912 attributed to a man named Schroeder. The Umlauff collection of images illustrate the use and social context of the artifacts. The often complete destruction of photographic material held by German museums during two world wars makes the Field Museum's Schroeder photographs of particular value to scholars of African art and culture.